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“PN Balji is a rare and wonderful fixture in that peculiar world known as
journalism in Singapore. For almost four decades … Balji navigated a
world where ‘truth’ was often a state-sanctioned commodity and real
journalism was a perilous undertaking … Balji’s insights into what it was
like to practise journalism with integrity under these circumstances is an
important contribution to the history of modern Singapore.”
David Plott
former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and managing editor of Global Asia
(www.globalasia.org)

___________

“Balji would loathe to admit it but he has raised a generation of intrepid

journalists. A newsman ahead of his time, Balji’s book contains not only
fascinating behind-the-scenes accounts told in his trademark punchy style,
it also holds deep lessons for tomorrow’s journalists.”
Loh Chee Kong
Deputy Chief Editor of TODAY
© 2019 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Text © PN Balji

Reprinted 2019

Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
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should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private
Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.
Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref

The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this
book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for
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40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.

Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

Names: P. N., Balji.

Title: Reluctant editor : the Singapore media as seen through the eyes of a veteran
newspaper journalist / P N Balji.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2019]
Identifiers: OCN 1098016628 | eISBN 978 981 4868 03 7
Subjects: Journalism--Singapore. | Journalists--Singapore. | Reporters and reporting--
Singapore.
Classification: DDC 079.5957--dc23

Printed in Singapore
 CONTENTS

Foreword

Author’s Note

Chapter 1 My Father’s Son

The chapter I didn’t want to write

Chapter 2 Accidental Sub-editor, Reluctant Editor

In a world of tabloids

Chapter 3 Living Dangerously

Who is that practising western-style journalism?

Chapter 4 The Misunderstood Paper

What a foreign editor saw that others did not

Chapter 5 Toh Chin Chye Affair

A footloose newsroom culture gone wrong

Chapter 6 Indian Fever

And TNP’s role in it

Chapter 7 Big, Bold and Sometimes Ugly

An apology is in store

Chapter 8 TODAY Bets on Goh Chok Tong

Chairman Cheng makes split-second decision

Chapter 9 TODAY Arrives, SPH Miscalculates

And media history is made
Chapter 10 Last of the Mohicans
Why the editors of old did it differently

Annex

About the Author

 FOREWORD

I thank my friend, PN Balji, for requesting me to write the Foreword for his
memoirs. He is one of Singapore’s veteran newspaper journalists and
editors, and a very good one.
Balji worked with The Straits Times, The New Paper, TODAY, Malay
Mail and New Nation. I think his greatest achievement as a journalist was
during the ten-year period when he was the editor of the tabloid, The New
Paper. He made the paper commercially successful and intellectually
credible. He also did an unusually good job as editor of TODAY, in the face
of fierce opposition.
Most intellectuals look down on the tabloids. I used to have the same
attitude until I met a veteran journalist and good friend of Singapore,
Arnold Brackman. He was a seasoned foreign correspondent, an expert on
Indonesia and a good friend of Mr S Rajaratnam, our first Foreign Minister.
He was teaching journalism at a college in Connecticut. One day, he asked
me which newspapers I read every day. I said I read The New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Professor Brackman
advised me to subscribe to a New York tabloid. He reasoned that the three
papers I read represented the elite opinions of America but not the opinions
of the man in the street. I took his advice and started to read the New York
Post, in addition to the three elite newspapers. The lesson I learnt from
Brackman is that it is important to be in touch with the ground.
Coming back to The New Paper, I recall that the paper once asked me to
write an article for them on ASEAN. I accepted the challenge. I wrote the
article in very simple English and free of jargon. I submitted my article and
received quite a shock when the editor of the paper told me that his readers
wouldn’t understand my article. The editor rewrote my article in a language
and style which was more accessible to his readers. It was a humbling
experience. It taught me that writing for The New Paper was an art which I
did not possess.
I have always admired our journalists. They work under many
constraints. My friend, Cheong Yip Seng’s book, OB Markers: My Straits
Times Story, gives a detailed account of the kinds of pressure under which
they work. I particularly admire the journalists who have not caved in to the
pressure but are able to maintain their integrity. Singapore needs a press
which is both independent and responsible.

Tommy Koh
Professor of Law
National University of Singapore
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

Reluctant Editor is NOT a memoir and doesn’t pretend to be one. It takes

the reader through the five newspapers where I worked and highlights the
challenges and successes I experienced, especially in the last two. I started
my career at the Malay Mail in 1970 and progressed through New Nation,
The Straits Times, The New Paper and TODAY.
The New Paper became my university of life, forcing my introverted
self to break out of the cocoon to take risks that have the ability, even years
later, to make me shudder each time I think about them. TODAY was an
insurgent that dared to steal a crumb of The Straits Times’ lunch. It
compelled me to roll up my sleeves and, audaciously perhaps, take on the
might of the print giant. Both papers broke new ground in Singapore media
history: The New Paper as the only afternoon newspaper ever to top 50,000
in daily sales; and TODAY for unlocking The Straits Times’ stranglehold on
the morning newspaper market.
The other theme that runs through the book is how a group of editors,
suckered by the rambunctious Fleet Street culture of England’s newspapers,
stood their ground when their principles would not let them give in to
everything that Lee Kuan Yew wanted. One should not forget that
Singapore’s founding prime minister was at his rogue best at that time. How
and why did they do things differently? I try to answer that question in the
final chapter, “Last of the Mohicans”.
There are NO photographs in this book. Sourcing for them would be a
difficult task, as I realised when sounding out my former colleagues. Hardly
anyone kept relevant photographs. I decided not to approach Singapore
Press Holdings and Mediacorp as I felt there might be more to-ing and fro-
ing than I cared for, and the cost would likely be prohibitive. Deep into my
retirement, this was the last thing I wanted.
Reluctant Editor is NOT a comprehensive study of the Singapore
media. This is a story, some aspects of which I was involved in. And in
others I was a front-row witness.
I have organised Reluctant Editor thematically, NOT chronologically.
This is deliberate as I felt that most readers will not have the time to plough
through the important highs and lows and fit them into the two themes
mentioned earlier. I sought to keep each chapter to about 4,000 words.
Sometimes I got carried away and a few chapters busted the word count.
My favourite chapters are “Toh Chin Chye Affair” and “Last of the
Mohicans”.
The saddest point in my career was to see a crisis envelope The New
Paper newsroom, leading to a great reporter being told to leave and two
smart editors being demoted. It was the most horrible sin to happen in a
newspaper. It took us a while to recover and get back on our feet. Years
later, as I recollect the sad episode, I do it with some pride. The reporter has
gone on to become a significant member in the commodities industry while
the two editors have shown great resilience to move on to important jobs in
Singapore Press Holdings. This episode is related in Chapter 5.
I write about the three print giants of modern Singapore in the final
chapter, “Last of the Mohicans”: Peter Lim, Cheong Yip Seng and Leslie
Fong. Watching how they operated was like sitting through tutorials on a
running story on Singapore journalism. I pay my deep respect to them. To
Peter, I say “thank you” for showing me how to be a good human being and
how to withstand the pressures of government; to Cheong, for displaying
how a story can be acutely angled; and to Leslie, for displaying a grit to
stay the course in the fight to achieve meaningful journalism despite the
great obstacles.
The three women in my life, one wife and two daughters, were very
patient as I went silent and grumpy while writing the book. They tolerated a
lot of my nonsense and their patience and understanding helped me to
complete the book.
 One of the first pieces of advice came from a former CNN journalist,
Marc Lourdes, who said, after reading my draft of the first chapter: “This is
not a journalism article; it is a book, it needs bells and whistles.” I never
looked back after that.
Ken Jalleh Jr pushed me all the way to rethink some of the chapters. In
one case, he was so angry after reading a chapter that he let fly: “Why do
you need to bring this incident up after so many years?” I rewrote that
chapter substantially and, I must admit, it turned out to be a much better and
purposeful chapter. Ken will notice the difference in the “Toh Chin Chye
Affair” chapter.
Irene Hoe, my editor, made me rethink words and phrases, pressed me
to get my dates and events right and, most importantly, did not flinch to tell
me to my face if she did not like what she read. Such editors are rare; we
must celebrate them.
And, of course, a “thank you” to Professor Tommy Koh for agreeing to
write in his simple, yet inimitable, prose the Foreword on what he felt about
the book and the profession called journalism.
Finally, my gratitude to a good friend who went out of his way to help
in the research, sometimes at very short notice. There are many more to
thank. I appreciate all the words of encouragement, advice and criticisms of
the draft chapters. Reluctant Editor is richer because of you.
 CHAPTER 1

My Father’s Son
The chapter I didn’t want to write
M
y father, Poravankara Narayanan Nair, was a poet, actor and trade
unionist all in one. Our home at Block 9 Room 8, Delhi Road, in
the former British Naval Base, doubled as a meeting place and
watering hole for my father and his friends to get together to read poetry,
discuss the next play to be staged and talk about workers’ rights. The
discussions were robust, with points and counter-points being argued but
seldom reaching a consensus. Still, there was hardly any rancour or
bitterness as my father’s friends stumbled home. I was a teenager then,
barely able to make sense of what prompted these men to debate so
animatedly and sometimes wondering if they were just men who were
wasting their time drinking and talking about inconsequential things.
Some 60 years later, as I reflect on those days, reality strikes: oh my
goodness, how could I have failed to realise that my father’s passion for
writing, socialism, drama, righteousness, rights of the underdog and his
ability to keep going day in day out had rubbed off on me? How I wish that
he were alive today! I would have a whisky with him and tell him: “Acha,
you made me the man I am today. Thank you very much.”
As I was planning the contents of this book, I was adamant that I would
not write about my childhood days. Who would care about my growing-up
days in the former British Naval Base in Sembawang? Where would people
have the time to read about my poverty-stricken early life as my mother
struggled daily to put food on the table? In a world where the reader’s
attention span is shrinking by the day, such chapters are normally given a
miss. I have done that many times. My thinking changed as I began
working on this book and asked myself: how did I get into journalism? How
did I develop a deep interest in Malayalam movies? Where did I get my
values from? How did I develop an interest in people from all walks of life?
How did I get to writing commentaries that a former Cabinet minister
labelled anti-government? How did the hidden empathy for the underdog
come out into the open and consume me? I now have the answer: my
father’s latent influence has played a major part in all of this even without
my realisation.
His convictions were powerful and he did not hesitate to express them.
Once, my primary school form teacher, Haridass, added the word Nair to
my name in my report card. I was registered in school as PN Balji, without
the Nair tag. Being a staunch socialist, my father was dead against
descriptions like Nair and Menon, which many Malayalees used to show off
their class and creed. My father was so pissed off that he stormed into the
teachers’ room and told Haridass: “Let this caste system end with me. I
don’t want my children to carry the Nair tag to show that they are from the
upper crust of society.” Much later, at my engagement ceremony in
Singapore in 1974, my father put his foot down with a classy response
when asked what kind of dowry he was expecting from the family of my
wife-to-be, Uma. “Is this a fish market?” he asked, mocking the practice
that was prevalent in Indian society. My father-in-law was speechless and
no dowry was paid. Struggling to make ends meet, I was upset that my
father did not accept the dowry offer. Years later, I was very proud that he
did what he did. Now I can say proudly that every dollar and cent that I
have has come from my own hard work and from my wife’s genius for
making good investments.
Somehow, in some way, my father’s imprint can be found on many of
the decisions I made as editor of The New Paper, and then as editor-in-chief
of TODAY and CEO of Mediacorp Press, which publishes TODAY. I didn’t
realise it at that time; his hidden influence played a part in a high-wire
moment when I was the acting editor of the New Nation and crossed swords
with Lee Kuan Yew over the publication of an article in the paper. Lee
Kuan Yew was furious. James Fu, Lee’s press secretary, relayed the prime
minister’s anger to Peter Lim, The Straits Times chief editor, in this way:
Who is that practising western-style journalism? I was worried that, at best,
my progress in the newspaper would be stymied or, at worse, I would lose
my job. Nothing happened as Peter managed to pacify Lee. More
importantly, I went on to edit The New Paper for ten years, and later
TODAY, for an initial three years and, later on, for another two years. There
were many other attempts to walk that tightrope of Singapore journalism,
which you can read about in the following pages.
My father’s biggest personal disappointment was a month-long strike
that he had organised as president of the Naval Base Labour Union. It failed
miserably. Years later, when I got my job in the Malay Mail, he told me:
“Don’t ever become a union official.” It was advice I have followed
religiously. Just as indelible as those words is an image of him that I have
carried with me from the early 1980s, when I was about to leave for the US
to have an angioplasty done. As I was leaving his home, he pointed a finger
at me and said: “Don’t forget you have two young girls and a wife to take
care of.”
My journalism journey also began with my father, long before I became
a reporter at the Malay Mail on 1 April 1970. He was an avid reader of The
Straits Times. My brother and I were also hooked on it and so, first thing
every morning, there was a race to get to the paper. My father had to step in
to restore the peace – the first to rise will get to read the paper first. As
always, he would be the first to get up.
We didn’t speak much. He was busy with his work and extracurricular
activities. I was busy studying or poaching fruit from the rambutan trees in
the backyard of the black and white houses of the British Navy expats.
One day in 1970, he broke the bad news: he was retiring from his job as
a storehouse man. My three sisters were married. I had just finished my
Higher School Certificate (today’s “A” Levels) and my brother was still in
secondary school. I had to go out and work to feed the family. I applied for
two jobs advertised in The Straits Times, one for a reporter in the Malay
Mail, the other for a special investigator in the Criminal Practices
Investigation Bureau (CPIB). Both the Malay Mail and the CPIB asked me
to attend interviews. Wee Kim Wee, then managing editor of The Straits
Times Press, in whose stable the Malay Mail was parked, headed the
interview panel, and the human resource person made me an offer almost
immediately. The salary was S$250 with a transport allowance of S$50. The
CPIB called me a few days later asking me to join them, but with my dream
job in hand, the CPIB was the last thing on my mind. I walked into Times
House in Kim Seng Road (where a condominium now stands in place of
Times House) with a swagger in my gait and confidence in my head – only
for both the swagger and confidence to be punctured a few days later.
The cause was my news editor, Jackie Sam, who revelled in being a
tyrant. He made life hell for me and many others. Jackie brought to life the
caricatures of editors made famous by Hollywood: smoking endlessly,
trying to look for something on his table hidden by piles of files with paper
chucked all over, barking orders to journalists … Jackie epitomised this
kind of behaviour. Once, he sent me to interview a Big Walk participant in a
kampong in Bukit Timah. I wrote up the interview, he had a quick look at
my report and asked me to go back and talk to the subject again. Nothing
was said about what was missing in the story or the extra questions I needed
to ask. I went back and back and back … 12 times. He must have decided
then that the punishment was enough and he finally rewrote the story for
publication. No explanations, no suggestions, no empathy. It was a far
better story than what I had written. It was crisp, short and flowed
smoothly. That whole episode was intended as an exercise in humiliation
and it worked. Enough was enough. I threw in my letter of resignation. It
landed on the chief reporter’s desk because Jackie happened to be off that
day and a veteran newsman, PM Raman, was in charge. He called me at
home and said: “I am chucking your letter into the bin. Come back to
work.” Raman was like a father figure in the Malay Mail newsroom,
offering a shoulder to cry on for those who got a verbal lashing from Jackie
or one of his cold, piercing trademark stares. I couldn’t go against the
advice of the avuncular Raman.
Together with police inspector-turned-reporter Wee Beng Huat, I was
made to do a punishing shift from 11pm to 8am, followed by a week on the
3am to 11am shift. Beng Huat and I would make regular visits to the
Singapore General Hospital mortuary, meet officers of the Fire Brigade and
talk to his police contacts. It was at around this time that the Singapore
Herald, anchored by media stalwarts such as Francis Wong and Ambrose
Khaw, came on the scene. The Herald began putting pressure on The Straits
Times from the word go. Herald exclusives and stories that angered the
government made many sit up. I remember a picture that was used across a
full page inside the paper with this cheeky headline: “The picture the
government doesn’t want you to see.” Below it was a picture of a military
contingent practising its National Day marchpast on a public road. The
government had ordered the media not to use the picture as they felt that it
would dilute the people’s enjoyment of the actual parade.
The Herald’s Harold Soh, another police officer turned crime reporter,
was getting stories which we could not even smell. Then we found out he
was rewarding those who manned the telephone lines of the Fire Brigade,
the first people to receive 999 calls. Our relationship with the telephone
operators had cooled and the tip-offs dried up. Not wanting the Herald team
to beat us to the crime stories, we also started rewarding the 999 operators
and our relationship returned to “normal”, until one day when we were
meeting them in a coffee shop in Chinatown, CPIB officers barged in and
arrested all of us. We were packed off to the CPIB office in Stamford Road,
isolated in separate cold rooms and interrogated for nearly 20 hours. It was
a totally numbing experience. On one level, I was thinking of my job,
whether I would still be able to continue in journalism. On another level, I
was thinking of how I was going to face my parents and society. Beng Huat
and I spent a lot of time at MacRitchie Reservoir, crying on each other’s
shoulders. A few months later, we both pleaded guilty to corruption and
were fined $1,000 each. The telephone operators were all sacked. That
incident never left me, piercing at my conscience every time I think about
it. We didn’t lose our jobs, but the telephone operators did.
This is it, I told myself. I didn’t want to do reporting any more.
Fortunately, I got moved to the sub-editor’s desk. That was where I found
my true calling.
 CHAPTER 2

Accidental Sub-editor, Reluctant Editor

In a world of tabloids
M
ost of my 35 years in mainstream journalism was lived in the
world of the media underdog. Except for a five-year spell (1982–
1988) in The Straits Times (ST), I worked for tabloids that had to
kick and punch to stay above water. Success was never a sure thing. Every
day was a battle of wits, reporting and shaping news stories, knowing full
well that the mighty ST almost always commanded first bite, leaving the
minnows like us to fight over the crumbs. ST was like a towering banyan
tree in whose suffocating shade lesser plants might sometimes steal enough
sunlight to survive, but never enough to overshadow the big banyan. The
four tabloids I worked for – Malay Mail, New Nation, The New Paper and
TODAY – had to rely on their reporters’ intuitive ability and agility to
deliver exclusives, and on their editors’ creative presentation of stories to
whet readers’ appetites to buy the newspapers day after day. The journalists’
survival instincts were tested every publishing day.
At The New Paper, one of the several consultants who had come from
US News & World Report was the avuncular Don Reeder, who worked with
reporters to make their stories meaningful and reader friendly. One day, I
asked Don what he made of the paper. He said:

I go back home every evening not knowing what the paper is going to look like.
The next morning, I am surprised to see a well-edited, well-designed and lively
paper. I don’t know how you all pull it off. Obviously, there is a central
intelligence running through the newsroom and the paper. Keep doing
whatever you are doing.

My turning point in tabloid journalism came in the 1970s, when I was a

crime reporter with the New Nation. Colleague Wee Beng Huat and I were
caught and fined for bribing the Fire Brigade’s telephone operators to get
tip-offs on crime stories. I have wondered many times how my career
would have turned out if not for that episode. The conviction in a court of
law was so traumatic that I wanted to quit reporting immediately. When the
management agreed to move me to sub-editing, I took to the new role with
great enthusiasm and relish. The desk-bound job of sub-editing and laying
out pages for the newspaper suited my introverted nature. No longer did I
have to station myself at the Singapore General Hospital mortuary every
working night to interview grieving relatives and hang around hospitals to
see ambulances bringing in blood-stained victims of accidents and murders.
My move to the sub-editor’s desk at the New Nation coincided with the
arrival of a Sri Lankan, Maurice Perera. His professionalism,
meticulousness, commitment, perseverance and sheer appetite for hard
work struck me immediately. Watching him in action was like looking at an
artist adding a stroke here and a shade there. He worked with hardly a
complaint. I decided that he was the journalist I wanted to emulate. At our
paper, which was targeted to reach the streets by noon, sub-editors generally
arrived by 5am and would leave by lunch time. Maurice would go home
only when he was satisfied with the final version of the pages he had laid
out. Most days, that meant he would be in the office until 6pm. I was
fortunate that he took a liking to me. As my unofficial mentor, he taught me
the finer points of sub-editing and page layout. It was his habit to collect
some of the most effective layouts he came across in British newspapers.
He would meticulously file them under such headings as murder, politics
and personality interviews, and refer to them regularly, adapting the ideas in
those tear sheets to his own layouts. I followed his lead and kept my own
collection on topics of interest for many years.
Khoo Teng Soon was at one time Singapore’s best page designer. In the
industry, he was better known as TS Khoo, and “The Fastest Pen In The
East” for the pace at which he could turn out great pages. He was group
editor of The Straits Times Press (1975) Ltd throughout most of the 1970s.
One day, I fished out of the newsroom bin his working layouts for the next
day’s front page of ST. I put them side by side on a table to see how that
final Page One had evolved. Like an instruction manual, they provided
useful insights into his thinking and the principles he applied. It was like
learning at the feet of a silent sage, trying to make sense of the
transformation of the front page from its inception, through the preliminary
layouts and into the masterful final.
It would be impossible not to mention David Kraal, the editor of New
Nation. He was the very antithesis of the Brahmin editors of that era, the
high priests of the printed page, who lorded it over the newsrooms as if they
were God’s gift to journalism. That aside, they were true professionals,
masters of their trade. Whether laying out pages, writing headlines or
turning around complex stories on difficult issues to make them digestible,
they were a joy to observe, study and emulate. David had all those skills.
Unlike them, though, he was approachable, always there, constantly
listening to his staff and trying to help them professionally and personally.
He threw some difficult and exciting pages at me, this accidental sub-editor.
I discussed them with Maurice and began to realise that this was what I
wanted to do in journalism. Sitting quietly in one corner of the newsroom,
stroking my beard, going out for a walk when I needed to clear my mind …
this job suited me to a T.
I rose up the editorial ladder and became acting editor in 1981, a year
before we had to give up the New Nation title and break up our newsroom.
The layoffs that followed were especially difficult and bitter because it was
not only the group and ST that were very profitable at the time, but even our
New Nation was just beginning to turn in a small profit.
Fate, this time by the name of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), intervened in an
unthinkable way to turn my life, and those of many, upside down. LKY had
initiated the creation of a rival to ST, so as to challenge the paper to up its
game and to provide what he saw as the waning Chinese-language
newspaper industry with an English-language lifeline to the future.
However, the newbie, the Singapore Monitor, was taking way too long to
get off the starting blocks because of disagreements between its editorial
and corporate bosses. LKY stepped in to broker a corporate deal, by getting
the New Nation to hand over its masthead to the Monitor in 1982. All the
advertising contracts that the New Nation had secured were passed over to
the Monitor. LKY sweetened the deal by letting New Nation’s owner, The
Straits Times Press, take a stake in the Chinese-language Shin Min Daily
News. With that behind-the-scenes manoeuvre, a new paper to rival ST was
born and a sacrificial lamb dispatched. This move by LKY would have been
unthinkable anywhere else in the industry but it fitted into his grand scheme
to make sure that ST remained relevant and the dominant player in
Singapore’s media scene. That move became a prelude to the merger of the
country’s newspapers into Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) in 1984.
To LKY, ST was like a porcelain vase that had to be protected and
nurtured at all costs. That was what he famously told SR Nathan, when he
asked Nathan, the career public servant, to become executive chairman of
SPH. LKY knew the value of ST as his propaganda machine, but he was
also sensitive to the paper’s need to get Singaporeans to read and support it.
He made sure it had no competition, allowing the paper to make lots of
money, but he realised that the downside of a lack of competition was a
possible slide in standards and a loss of readership, and so the Monitor was
finally born.
In anticipation of what was to come, ST went into a take-no-prisoners
battle mode, signing exclusive arrangements with international media
organisations to use their materials, even their comics. The publishing
giant’s circulation and advertising departments made sure that the Monitor
would run up against huge and never-ending hurdles. One ST tactic was to
send its circulation staff to newsagents and pile copies of ST on top of those
of the Monitor, tricking would-be buyers into thinking that the tabloid was
not available.
The newbie struggled. It lacked an experienced and crafty CEO who
understood how the Singapore market worked. It was not long before the
red ink began to colour the balance sheets and the new venture began
staring into an abyss of deepening losses and feeble circulation gains. Its
financial backer, United Overseas Bank, realising that there was no prospect
of a quick turnaround, pulled the plug in 1985, a scant three years after its
birth.
Editorially, the Monitor had been a breath of fresh air in what some may
have considered a staid, even stale, media scene in Singapore. When the
Monitor’s death was announced, a group of students from the National
University of Singapore wanted to gather support for a new newspaper to
rival ST. The president of the Students’ Political Association, Tan Tnng
Nuan, said at that time: “We are concerned about the closure of the
Monitor. The closure has led to a vacuum, with one newspaper and one
opinion.”
The demise of the original New Nation on 30 June 1982, one year after I
became acting editor, was a sad day for the staff. The paper was respected
for its reports, analyses and commentaries as they were well received by
many readers. Some of its writers became talking points in a Singapore
where journalists were unlikely candidates for celebrity status. Ismail
Kassim’s reports and analyses from Malaysia were closely followed on both
sides of the Causeway, with his keen observations of Dr Mahathir
Mohamad’s controversial decisions communicated by fax machine to
readers up north. Education correspondent Teresa Ooi’s commentaries and
exclusives always got the attention of teachers – and almost as often got on
the nerves of the Education Ministry. Never far from controversy, sports
writer Jeffrey Low’s Malaysia Cup analyses often became the subject of
intense lunch-time debate and Tan Bah Bah’s editorials were scrutinised by
the government with a fine toothcomb. Said Bah Bah:

Despite the presence of Big Brother, we at New Nation pounded away

producing stories that many government agencies didn’t like. Press freedom
was practised except that none of us was carrying placards.

Working behind the scenes in planning and shaping the reports were
stalwarts like Sonny Yap, who went about his work as features editor
calmly and methodically, without any high jinks. He spoke of what he got
from working in New Nation:

Immeasurable. A grounding in journalism which is unreplicable in today’s

newsrooms; exposure to the gritty Singapore of the 1970s; lessons from
editors and seniors which stay with me to this day. Then there were the myriad
training programmes and overseas sabbaticals which made up for my lack of
 higher education. Not to mention the career breaks and opportunities which
enabled me to grow in my job.

A gritty Singapore indeed. Still reeling from a shock exit in 1965 from
Malaysia, just two years after a ground-breaking merger, Singapore was
struck by a second thunderbolt – the withdrawal of British troops east of
Suez in 1971. The economic and political fallout of these events was huge,
especially for a newly-independent Singapore. The troops were a £70-
million annual burden on the British economy which the then Labour
government decided it could no longer bear. To Singapore, the British bases
were a boon, contributing 20 per cent to the GDP. The quickie divorce from
Malay-dominated Malaysia was the result of an intractable divide over race,
and came in the wake of public sparring between leaders north and south of
the Causeway. It sparked fears of a revival of the 1964 racial riots. Those
events gave LKY the perfect opportunity to use the Internal Security Act to
arrest certain opposition politicians, including union leaders, without trial.
With the opposition neutralised, the country embarked on rapid
industrialisation, changed labour laws to attract foreign investments and
tripled military spending. Nearly everything we see in today’s Singapore –
whether it is the glittering prosperity of the city state or the paucity of
political space – has its roots in how LKY and his lieutenants dealt with that
double whammy.
ST was a huge beneficiary of the dazzling economic growth. As the
country prospered, so did ST. Strict media licensing laws and the
government-enforced closure of its rivals, Eastern Sun and the Singapore
Herald, also helped ST and its parent company to become runaway
economic successes. They paid back the favour by supporting the
government unabashedly, sometimes even if it meant disregarding the most
important stakeholder – the reader. LKY’s strategy for ensuring ST’s loyalty
worked well for both parties from the late 1970s.
Lyn Holloway and Peter Lim used the opportunity to launch the golden
era for Singapore journalists. Both the CEO and editor-in-chief came up
with plans to upgrade journalists’ professional, leadership and intellectual
skills. The icing on the cake was the initiative to give senior editors a two-
week sabbatical of their choice to anywhere every year. Even their wives’
flight tickets were paid for. I asked Peter why the company was so
generous. He reasoned: our senior editors work long hours, this was our
small way of saying “thank you” to the wives. He was disappointed that he
couldn’t convince the board to extend it to the husbands of female editors.
Peter and Lyn also made it a point to send flowers on the wedding
anniversaries of the senior editors and their spouses. Peter intervened
personally to get the company to grant me a housing loan (the company had
no such loan scheme). He also got the company to underwrite my travel
expenses and medical bills when I had an angioplasty done in San
Francisco in 1986, although SPH’s executive chairman at the time, SR
Nathan, had not been in favour of it since the procedure was already
available in Singapore.
The Lyn Holloway-Peter Lim tango effectively skirted the barrier
between the corporate and editorial departments and I have not seen that
partnership repeated since. Peter knew he had to get the buy-in of the CEO
to retain and attract talent, and Lyn had the foresight to realise that editorial
excellence would boost readership and advertising revenue. Like all good
things, this arrangement didn’t last. Soon after, ex-Cabinet minister Lim
Kim San replaced SR Nathan as SPH’s executive chairman in 1988; he
slashed executives’ perks, unceremoniously ending the golden era.
Most of the New Nation’s staff moved to ST after our newspaper was
gifted to the Singapore Monitor in 1982. My five years in ST, beginning in
1982, were difficult. I held important roles, including those of night editor
and news editor, but found it hard to adjust to a newsroom so radically
different from the ones I had known. ST was much more hierarchical and
disciplined. I was a fish out of water trying to swim through a labyrinth of
rules. ST had little choice but to keep a tight rein on the newsroom, with an
ever-watchful and ever-suspicious officialdom scrutinising its reports; one
misjudgement might lead to an internal inquiry, a rap on the knuckles and
perhaps force the company to move certain journalists to other departments.
So when SPH management announced that a new paper would be launched
in 1988, I jumped at the chance of a transfer. Editor-in-chief Cheong Yip
Seng agreed and I was made deputy to the chief editor, Peter Lim, who had
to resign as editor-in-chief in charge of the English and Malay newspapers
under SPH.
The working title was Project 459, supposedly representing the first
three digits of telephone numbers in Toa Payoh, a neighbourhood whose
metrics matched those of our target audience. To reach these readers, our
stories would be short and snappy, and its photographs and illustrations
would be in colour – a big deal then as colour tended to be reserved for
National Day and other special occasions. Each edition would feature a
glossary, giving the meanings of certain words that appeared in the stories.
Mock-ups were shown to potential advertisers and readers.
The marketplace buzz and much of the feedback were supportive, but
when the first copies of The New Paper (TNP) rolled off the presses on 26
July 1988, the reaction was just the opposite. Clearly, Singapore was not
ready for a paper that treated news in a catchy and fun way. Giordano
showed its displeasure by cancelling its advertising contract and the paper’s
sales sank below 50,000 copies a day, much below expectations. Peter acted
quickly. The paper went downmarket, with sensational Page One headlines.
One year after the launch, TNP ran a series of stories on a prostitute in the
UK who counted among her clients famous newspaper editors and British
MPs. The series became an instant hit and Pamella Bordes – nicknamed
Papadum Pam because of her Indian origins – became a talking point
because of the treatment of the story, revealing salacious details of her life
story. Other stories followed in a similar vein and the paper’s circulation
began to breach the 50,000 figure. Like an experienced pilot, Peter was
readying the paper for take-off after a false start.
However, SPH executive chairman Lim Kim San was not happy. He
reckoned that our staff costs were too high because of the highly-paid
western journalists in the TNP newsroom. Peter’s own pay and perks were a
constant source of irritation for the chairman. He hounded Peter often. In
1990, two years after the launch, Peter decided to leave. He asked me if I
would take over as editor, but I was reluctant as I was worried about my
health. I had only recently returned to work after an angioplasty procedure
in the US and believed that taking on the top job would be too much for my
heart. Peter took me to lunch in a small and charming restaurant called
Checkers in Orchard Road to persuade me. I left the decision to my wife,
Uma, as it would mean I would have even less time to spend at home. She
took three days to make up her mind and told me to go ahead and accept the
job.
I did, and my ten years as editor of TNP turned out to be the best
experience that I had in my career. The paper hit new highs in circulation,
helped mainly by breaking news from Operation Desert Shield, the build-up
to the first Gulf War which was launched in August 1990, and the outbreak
of the war itself in January 1991. The 1990 World Cup in Italy was another
rocket booster as most of the football matches during that miracle month in
June and July were played early in the morning, Singapore time. TNP
became the Singapore newspaper to get the first bite of the news from Italia
90. Readers began to lap up the breaking news, analyses and action
graphics, and the paper’s sales began to soar, hitting a daily peak of
150,000.
TNP became my university of life, with my personality seeing a
transformation. I had always been an impossible introvert, speaking very
little and seldom socialising with colleagues. During meetings, I was mostly
silent, speaking only when spoken to. My ten-year editorship of TNP
changed all that. I forced myself to go out and mingle with people. I
accepted invitations to speak at public functions, and I regularly convened
newsroom-wide meetings. Bit by bit, I began to break out of my cocoon.
TNP’s success made the transformation easier. Editor-in-chief, Cheong Yip
Seng, became a catalyst. He believed in TNP, attended nearly every
Tuesday meeting with the editors, praised the paper publicly and endorsed it
many times. All this gave me the much-needed confidence to break out of
my introverted, shy and even reticent personality. Many times, I swung to
the other extreme, becoming very talkative (too talkative, says my wife,
Uma).
 TNP gave me a rich understanding of various aspects of publishing.
SPH’s chief operating officer, Denis Tay, took a special interest in the paper,
chairing a weekly meeting of the heads of the editorial, marketing and
circulation departments. Those meetings, where all the departments had to
present reports on TNP’s progress and follow-up plans, were instructive as
they plucked me out of my narrow editorial concerns and made me
acknowledge and understand that the success of a newspaper depended on
all three departments coming together regularly to share information on
what the market wanted. It was from the circulation briefings that I learnt
the most. Its staff was out there on the streets, mingling with readers and
newspaper vendors informally. They had the pulse of the reader; they knew
what readers looked for in an afternoon newspaper, why some editions sold
well, why others didn’t. Their briefings were more art than science; I learnt
not to ask them questions because they saw that as editorial arrogance and
shied away from being open and candid. Our relationship grew; they had no
inhibitions about telling me whether an edition would sell well just by
looking at the headlines and pictures on Page One. They never sugar-coated
their judgements, and most times, they were spot on. The newsroom would
fax the Page One layouts to them daily.
Meanwhile, I had to deal with a strongman executive chairman who
repeatedly threatened to shut us down if we didn’t show him we were
committed to reducing the red ink on our balance sheet. To show him that
we were on the right track, when journalists resigned, we simply reallocated
the work and did not replace them. Soon, Lim Kim San got off our backs
and that removed a big obstacle to our take-off.
My TNP life was my most rewarding newspaper experience, not just
because it became the only afternoon daily to hit a daily sales figure of
more than 100,000 copies a day, but also because of the talented team of
editors, sub-editors, reporters, artists and administrative staff I worked with.
They thrived in an open newsroom environment that was not straight-
jacketed. It spawned a crazy and wild bunch who played and worked hard
and helped make TNP a talking point. I must make a special mention of
editorial artists such as Cel Gulapa, Lee Hup Kheng and Simon Ang;
writers and editors, including T Ramakrishan, R Jegathesan, Ken Jalleh Jr,
Ng Whay Hock, Joe Nathan Lourdes, Pradeep Paul, Suresh Nair, Yaw Yan
Chong, Pauline Loh, Irene Ng and Rosnah Ahmad; photographers like
Philip Lim, Simon Ker and Jonathan Choo, and admin staff, including
Zainah Omar and R Nirmala. It was a dream team of world-class
professionals – some of them are still making waves in their new roles both
inside and outside the newsroom.
 CHAPTER 3

Living Dangerously
Who is that practising western-style journalism?
N
early every editor in Singapore has a Lee Kuan Yew story to tell.
Former editor-in-chief, Cheong Yip Seng, has written in his book,
OB Markers: My Straits Times Story,1 of being warned as a rookie
reporter that if he broke an embargo, he would have his neck broken. That
was in the 1960s. Peter Lim, his immediate predecessor at Singapore Press
Holdings, has told us about how he was made to hand over the New Nation
title to a rival newspaper company; and former Straits Times editor, Leslie
Fong, of how he nearly lost his job over his “Thinking Aloud” column.
My own Lee Kuan Yew story began on 3 February 1981, 11 years after I
first entered the newsroom in Times House. It was the eve of Chinese New
Year and I was then acting editor of the afternoon daily, the New Nation.
That day, the Chineselanguage papers had a report on Prime Minister Lee
Kuan Yew’s Chinese New Year message, which had been released for
publication exclusively to the local Chinese-language media. Other media
had to wait until the next day to receive the message for publication the day
after. The first day of this public holiday was one of two days in the whole
year when the New Nation was the only English-language newspaper to be
published, the other being Boxing Day. New Nation journalists made sure
that those special editions were memorable, with stories that would
encourage readers to buy the paper regularly.
The message from the Prime Minister did not just contain festive wishes
for the new year, it carried a compelling news point of national significance.
The Housing and Development Board (HDB), the national housing
authority, was looking at ways to get public housing residents to live near
their parents in the same estate. The political and social impact of his
message was impossible to ignore. The natural expansion of HDB housing
was splintering Singapore families. With ageing citizens preferring to stay
put as their adult children married and moved into homes in newer estates,
it seemed inevitable that over time, such separation on a national scale
would weaken family ties. Unintended though it was, it would inevitably
result in seniors leading lonely lives and, eventually, the state would be
required to look after them.
A New Nation editor called the Prime Minister’s press secretary, James
Fu, and was told about the embargo, which reserved publication for the
Chinese-language newspapers as they did not publish on the first and
second days of the Chinese New Year. Fu said they would release it to the
rest of the media one day later, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, for
publication the next day. Such a rule seemed strange to me, especially when
news of the HDB’s plan was already in the public domain, albeit only in
Chinese. Fu was adamant that the New Nation respect this two-stage
embargo. I appealed, but he refused to budge. Finally, I heeded my
journalistic instincts and went ahead with publishing the story on the first
day of the Chinese New Year.
The New Nation’s report, “Bringing Families Together”, said:2

Mr Lee discussed the problem of parents who are unwilling to move to a new
housing estate and who would rather their children apply for a flat in their
estate. Unfortunately, he said, this cannot be easily done because the old
estates have been fully developed and those blocks that are being rebuilt will
not be enough to accommodate such applicants. He suggested that the HDB
make it more attractive, in terms of price, for the exchange and resale of old
flats. Mr Lee said he was shocked to discover during a tour of Ang Mo Kio on
Jan 25 that there are two old folks’ homes in the estate. He said this is
something we should not encourage.

Within minutes of the paper hitting the streets, the Prime Minister’s
Office called. Peter Lim, who had editorial oversight of the New Nation, got
the brunt of the scolding. Fu relayed the Prime Minister’s angry message:
“Who is that journalist practising western-style journalism?” Through the
press secretary, Peter tried to pacify the Prime Minister by explaining that I
was new to the role of editor and did not know it was accepted practice for
the government to grant the first bite of the Chinese New Year message to
the Chinese-language press. Although I was acting on the journalistic
principle that it was acceptable to publish information that was already in
the public domain, I came to realise that I ought to have checked with the
editor-in-chief before deciding to go ahead. This episode, however, had a
happy ending: the CEO of the newspaper company, Lyn Holloway, later
walked into my room, put his arm around my shoulders and said: “Don’t
worry, Balji. We have taken care of it.” That act of warmth and support has
stayed with me ever since. I had expected the worst. Lee Kuan Yew was
known to be intolerant of dissent, especially from those working in media.
His record with journalists who veered off the straight and narrow path was
legendary. Some have been detained without trial, some blackballed, and
others forced to leave journalism and even the country. My worst fear about
getting into his bad books was that I might be forced to quit journalism
altogether. None of this materialised. Not only did I continue to run the New
Nation until 1982 when we had to gift it to our competitor, Singapore News
and Publications Ltd, but I also edited The New Paper for ten years from
1990 to 2000 and launched TODAY as the founding editor-in-chief and
CEO of Mediacorp Press, its publisher. That stint lasted three years until
2003.
My colleague of many years, Mary Lee, was not so fortunate. She had
been a writer for The Singapore Herald newspaper, which was forced to
close in 1971. Accused of being part of a “black ops” plot mounted by
foreigners, the newspaper had its publishing licence suspended. Lee Kuan
Yew had accused the Herald of “taking the government on” since it began
publication in 1970. Weeks before its closure, another English-language
daily, Eastern Sun, had also been forced to close. Government action
against the media was not confined to English-language publications. The
Chinese-language Nanyang Siang Pau was accused of glamourising
communism and encouraging Chinese chauvinism. Publication of the paper
was suspended briefly and four of its editorial executives were detained for
up to two years.
After the Herald episode, Mary went to the US on a journalism
fellowship, then joined the Sunday Nation team upon her return. She got on
the Prime Minister’s nerves from the very first day in November 1974. She
became the target of his fury because of her “provocative” columns; that
was how the paper’s editor, Cheong Yip Seng, described them publicly. One
commentary that infuriated Lee Kuan Yew was headlined “The Great Paper
Chase”. He wanted Mary sacked for saying that the pursuit of certificates
and degrees was a total waste of time. He felt that she was undermining the
education system. Peter Lim, who was the New Nation’s chief editor at that
time, and Cheong tried to appease the Prime Minister by moving Mary to a
back-end job as a sub-editor. “I wasn’t happy but neither was I living in fear
then,” she would recall in a 2013 article, “How LKY Changed My Life”, on
the Singapore news website, The Independent. It was during the difficult
period in the 1970s that a former classmate, who had not been in touch for
seven years, took her on a car ride so they could talk privately. Be careful,
he told her. Throw out all publications you brought back from the US.
Don’t invite to your home anyone you are not familiar with, and don’t hold
any parties in your place, he advised.
“It wasn’t pleasant. Suddenly, I’m no longer able to trust anyone around
me, except my mother. I cried for days. I knew what I had to do: I had to
leave Singapore,” Mary wrote. At the time, she was a writer at the paper,
handpicked by Cheong to work with him on the Sunday Nation.
Some felt Cheong should have taken responsibility because he had
approved her commentaries and promoted her as a provocative columnist.
In a newsroom that felt under siege, journalists turned fearful, figuratively –
and sometimes literally – looking behind their backs and self-censoring
their own work. Those close to Mary knew that her free-spiritedness and
her uncompromising views on current affairs would make her a target in
Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. Leaving her country of birth would be an
eventuality.
In 1975, she left for London, with no money and no idea of what she
would do there. Mary depended on her friends until she got a job at Harrods
as a sales assistant during the Christmas season. Then she went into
journalism working as a sub-editor at a weekly newspaper, did some casual
work at The Sunday Times and was taken on as a sub-editor by The
Guardian. Two years later, she landed a job in Hong Kong with the Far
Eastern Economic Review magazine. There, she was in her element (“full of
adventure,” she wrote) writing commentaries as a correspondent in Beijing
and an open letter to Lee Kuan Yew, headlined “Lee To Lee”, which was a
sharp criticism of Lee Kuan Yew’s stranglehold on Singapore society. “Ease
your hold on Singapore and in 25 years’ time, the island will have grown
into a real garden city where a hundred more flowers – some wild, but all
beautiful – will bloom naturally,” she wrote. That was in 1985. As expected,
the advice was not followed and today’s leadership is struggling to find
ways to allow the wild flowers to bloom.
Mary returned to Singapore in 1995 for “medical and personal reasons”.
The Far Eastern Economic Review kept her on salary for a couple of years
as an “observer”. She earned a Master’s degree in English, then applied to
Singapore Press Holdings for a job. The interview panel was divided. Mano
Sabnani, then managing editor of the English and Malay newspapers
division, was in favour of hiring her, saying that people, especially
experienced journalists, should be given a second chance. The HR people
were not, citing her commentaries and her controversial run-ins with the
government. The ball was kicked into my court for a decision and I took
Mano’s side. Cheong, who was now editor-in-chief, concurred, and Mary
returned to her old Times House haunt, this time as a sub-editor with The
New Paper, after an absence of 20 years.
Initially, it was smooth going in a newsroom that embraced Mary’s
seniority, knowledge of Asia and ability to cut through the clutter in reports
written by young reporters. She played the role of mother hen perfectly,
feeding staff with her homemade kueh pie tee and providing a listening ear.
Her rebellious instincts, however, did show up occasionally and finally
caught fire when the BBC sought her views on Singapore’s ministerial
salaries, which made its politicians the world’s highest paid. She could
hardly have chosen a more controversial topic. Mary told the BBC
interviewer: “It was OK to pay basketball star Michael Jordan millions
because his skills were self-evident. But ministers? Their skills, if they had
any, can’t be seen.” Ouch!
Lee Kuan Yew was not going to keep quiet about that. The salaries idea
was his brainchild and he was hell-bent on paying ministers top dollar
because he said he was having problems getting good people into politics.
He demolished all criticism and the very subject became an OB (out-of-
bounds) marker, an issue that was not for discussion. Even a quarter of a
century later, ministerial pay remains an issue that polarises Singapore
society. It was on 21 October 1994 that the White Paper on Competitive
Salaries for Competent and Honest Government was presented to
Parliament. The central argument that high salaries were needed to recruit
talent was not generally disputed, but it was the amount of money being
proposed, making Singapore politicians the world’s highest paid, that many
could not accept. The media was given specific instructions not to report the
increments that were given every year to the ministers for fear that putting
that kind of information in the public domain would reignite acrimonious
debate and stoke public anger.
Mary’s BBC interview ran smack into the government’s take-no-
prisoners stance on the issue. Lee Kuan Yew’s reaction came fast and
furious and, once again, he wanted action taken against her. An internal
inquiry panel recommended that she be told to go. That decision rested on a
company rule that she had broken: she had failed to seek the editor’s
permission to give that interview. The New Paper appealed to Cheong Yip
Seng, who agreed on a compromise: Mary would be demoted and her salary
cut.
Back in 1981, The Straits Times (ST) had done something
uncharacteristic and unthinkable. It had responded publicly to
Communications and Labour Minister Ong Teng Cheong, who criticised ST
and the New Nation for publishing what he called “irresponsible,
misleading and rumour-mongering” reports on impending bus fare
increases. The reports said the bus company was mulling over two
proposals: the price of bus concession passes to go up between $1 and $10,
and a general fare increase of 5 cents.
The reporters attributed the information to unnamed sources. The group
editor, Peter Lim, went public with a spirited defence of the newspapers and
their reporters, something I have not witnessed since. Such debates had
taken place privately between Cabinet ministers and editors occasionally,
but never in public. As acting editor of the New Nation, I was required to
attend an unusual press conference that Ong Teng Cheong had called to
deny the reports, in the presence of key ministry officials and Singapore
Bus Service (SBS) bosses. Visibly upset, the minister looked directly at the
editors assembled on the opposite side of the table and said in a dramatic
tone of voice: “All the reliable sources you can lay your hands on are here.
Name them.” The line-up included Permanent Secretary (Communications)
Sim Kee Boon, and from SBS managing director Tan Kong Eng, executive
director Lim Leong Geok and general manager Mah Bow Tan.3
At that tense confrontation over the bus fare hike reports, one of the
unnamed sources cited by the newspapers was seated there right in front of
us, his expression impassive. Peter Lim declined to expose him, saying that
professional ethics prevented him from naming our sources. Peter went
further when he said the sources who provided the information were
authoritative but conceded they had now proven unreliable.
One heart-stopping moment came as the press conference was winding
up. Peter noticed that Sim Kee Boon, the Permanent Secretary, appeared
lost in thought. Peter asked him: “You have something else on your mind,
Mr Sim?” Sim Kee Boon said he wondered if The Straits Times would give
an apology. Peter asked: “Is one called for?” Sim Kee Boon felt that in view
of what had been established, an apology might not be out of place. Peter
said he would give the suggestion his serious consideration. In the end, no
apology was given.
This was actually the second confrontation between the minister and
Peter Lim; the first had come the day before when Ong Teng Cheong
slammed the English-language press over their reports on this issue, at an
event attended by Chinese-language newspaper reporters. In the ST report
the next day, headlined “Teng Cheong Raps Straits Times And New
Nation”, Peter had already made clear what the group’s response would be.
He said: “If New Nation and The Straits Times were to name their sources,
no one, not even Mr Ong, we think, would feel that the two newspapers had
been irresponsible.”
 In the course of writing this chapter, I caught up with Rav Dhaliwal, the
New Nation reporter who had written the story of the bus fare increase, and
asked who her sources were. She gave me two names. I then asked her why
they had leaked the story to the press. She said: “As the controversy blew
up, I realised that the information was leaked to test the ground. They
wanted to see how the ground would react. If the reaction was negative,
then they would announce a substantially lower increase. Yes, we were used
by these two people for their devious means.”
That long-ago government face-off with the media was a rare moment
when I was proud to be a Singapore journalist. When Peter made the issue
public and responded in a firm but gentlemanly way, he showed all of us
journalists how the media could respond when it felt it had been
unjustifiably reprimanded by the government. I remember him telling
senior editors that if we had done something wrong, we should come clean,
admit our mistake and apologise. If not, we should forward our case
unemotionally and in a balanced manner.
Much later, we would learn that this episode had negative consequences
for Ong Teng Cheong’s political prospects. A new generation of leaders was
being groomed to take over from Lee Kuan Yew and his team. Ong was a
key member of that second tier and this perceived setback was seen as one
reason he failed to become Singapore’s second prime minister. He was also
the go-to minister for matters relating to the Chinese community. While he
focused his attack on the English-language newspapers, no mention was
made of Nanyang Siang Pau, which was the first newspaper to report that
bus fares would go up. When asked by The Straits Times why the English
media had been singled out, Ong Teng Cheong said he had spoken to
Nanyang Siang Pau’s editor-in-chief and registered his unhappiness. Some
political observers saw that as a leadership weakness in an aspiring national
leader and wondered if he could truly be a leader of all races.
More importantly, there was the question of how Lee Kuan Yew would
have regarded the whole episode. Some Singaporeans feel that Lee Kuan
Yew, who believed that editors had to be tamed at all cost, would have seen
this as a weakness in Ong Teng Cheong. Ultimately, it was Goh Chok Tong
who succeeded Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister in 1990, and Ong became
Deputy Prime Minister (DPM). Ong Teng Cheong’s appointment as DPM
was referred to in the book, Tall Order.4 When Goh Chok Tong told Lee
Kuan Yew of his intention to pick Ong, Lee Kuan Yew asked why his son,
Lee Hsien Loong, was not on the list. Goh Chok Tong got around that
sticky situation by appointing two DPMs – Ong Teng Cheong and Lee
Hsien Loong.
In 1991, I was involved in another tangle with the government, again
over sources. The New Paper’s ace crime reporter, Suresh Nair, had gotten
hold of a report that detailed a Super Puma crash at Sembawang Air Base,
which took the lives of four crew members. The statement issued by the
Ministry of Defence (Mindef) was brief, as usual. It offered scant details,
such as the name of the aircraft, where and when the accident happened and
how many died. Through his sources, Suresh dug up more information,
including the likely cause of the crash (malfunction of the rear rotor blades)
and the pilot losing control of the chopper after it suddenly spun mid-flight.
The report quoted sources as saying: “The pilot informed the control tower
that he was facing some mechanical problems when cruising between 250
and 350 metres.”
We did not realise that we were contravening Mindef secrecy laws.
Many months later, Suresh learnt that an investigation had been ordered to
find out who had leaked the story. “Between six and eight of my sources
who offered the technical information were pulled up by military
intelligence and interrogated for several days at the Bukit Gombak Base,”
he said. Permanent Secretary (Defence) Lim Siong Guan demanded that we
name the sources. Suresh and I declined because revealing those names was
as good as killing our profession. Lim listened, did not say much and we
left that meeting thinking the matter was settled. Until we were called in a
second time. Again, Lim asked us for the names of the sources, and again,
we declined. We were told that we would be charged in court for
contravening Mindef regulations. In the end, that never came to pass.
Instead, we were fined via private summons. Suresh recalled: “I was told
that some officers and non-commissioned officers who were questioned
were punished with demotions, salary cuts and a salary freeze. The incident
pains me even today, 27 years later, that my buddies who risked their
careers to give me such exclusive information were punished severely.”
It taught me a meaningful lesson. The details published in our report
had been too close for Mindef’s comfort and left no doubt that the
information had been leaked from the airbase. Not only would an employer
find such a leak intolerable, but the law was also clearly against us. If the
team had better understood the ramifications of the law, we could have
handled the details differently and the chances of Mindef coming down
hard on the paper would have been minimised, and the officers involved
might not have had to pay such a heavy price.
Suresh belonged to a rare breed of reporters who thrived on exclusives –
journalists refer to them as scoops – which you hardly find today in our
newsrooms. He cultivated his sources and they trusted him. His scoop days
came to end when late one night, the feared midnight knock on the door
came. Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) officers went to his
home and took him away. He and his wife were terrified. Suresh was
interrogated for many hours: the officers wanted to know if he had bribed
Central Narcotics Bureau officers to get his stories. Suresh denied the
allegations. The episode had the effect the government intended, with
Suresh wanting to move out of crime reporting and into sports journalism. I
raised this with Minister George Yeo during a lunch meeting with editors.
His cryptic reply: “Let the CPIB do its job.” I muttered: “It is unlikely they
will find anything.” Nothing was found and Suresh did not hear further
from the CPIB, but it achieved the chill effect the government wanted to
send to Suresh and others who dared to tread its path.
Then came the General Election in 1997. Buried in the ashes of that
bruising electoral battle was a story in The New Paper (TNP) which
produced in full the police reports that a Workers’ Party politician had made
against Lee Kuan Yew and ten other PAP politicians on Polling Day. The
day before, Opposition politician JB Jeyaretnam had uttered at an election
rally on 1 January: “Finally, Mr Tang Liang Hong has just placed before me
two reports he has made to the police against, you know, Mr Goh Chok
Tong and his team.”
In those police reports, it was alleged a number of PAP ministers had
called Tang Liang Hong an anti-English educated, anti-Christian Chinese
chauvinist, claims “likely to incite religious extremists to hate me and my
family and cause harm to me and my family”. Tang Liang Hong, a lawyer
and Workers’ Party candidate for the Cheng San Group Representation
Constituency (GRC), was fighting an election for the first time. Although a
rookie politician, he was regarded as a triple threat by the ruling party.
Fluent and persuasive in Chinese, English and Malay, he marshalled his
arguments forcefully and pushed PAP leaders to go on a verbal rampage,
hurling accusation after accusation at him. The 1997 election campaign
turned out to be one of the most toxic in recent history, with the PAP intent
on preventing Tang Liang Hong and JBJ from getting into Parliament via
the contest in Cheng San GRC.
I remember that rally speech by JBJ so well. He was the last speaker. He
had finished his speech and was about to leave the stage when he was
handed a piece of paper. He turned back to face the crowd of about 20,000
and uttered those fateful 28 words about the police reports. Technically,
there was a case to sue JBJ as one would not make a police report to praise
another person. So Lee Kuan Yew must have known that he had JBJ and
Tang Liang Hong in his crosshairs. Don’t forget that JBJ was the man who
broke PAP’s monopoly in Parliament when he took Anson in a by-election
in 1981.
The next morning, just after I had put the polling day edition of TNP to
bed and was enjoying a cup of coffee in the office canteen, my editor-in-
chief called. “Get copies of the police reports from the Central Police
Station and use them,” said Cheong Yip Seng, a man of few words. “But the
police don’t release such reports to the media,” I replied. “Call them. They
will release them to you,” came the immediate reply.
Word was sent to the printing department to stop the presses, and to the
staff to wait for a new Page One lead. The buzz in the newsroom was
palpable. I was excited as I knew this would be an exclusive for TNP. I was
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of And both were
young
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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eBook.

Title: And both were young

Author: Madeleine L'Engle

Release date: December 14, 2023 [eBook #72403]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., Ltd,
1949

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images
made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AND BOTH

WERE YOUNG ***
 And Both Were Young

I saw two beings in the hues of youth

Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill...
And both were young—and one was beautiful

The Dream, canto ii

Lord Byron
 MADELEINE L'ENGLE

And Both Were Young

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., INC.

NEW YORK
 COPYRIGHT, 1949 BY
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., INC., N.Y.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DESIGNED BY MAURICE SERLE KAPLAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Ninth Printing, February, 1962

To JO
 Contents
one: The Prisoner of Chillon 1
two: The Page and the Unicorn 47
three: The Escape from the Dungeon 90
four: The Lost Boy 124
five: The Stranger 152
six: The Prisoner Freed 180
 CHAPTER ONE
The Prisoner of Chillon
"WHERE are you going, Philippa?" Mrs. Jackman asked sharply as
Flip turned away from the group of tourists standing about in the cold
hall of the Chateau of Chillon.
"I'm going for a walk," Flip said.
Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "I'd rather you stayed with
us, Flip."
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with pleading. "Please, father!"
she whispered. Then she turned and ran out of the chateau, away
from the dark, prisoning stones, and out into the sunlight that was as
bright and as sudden as bugles. She ran down a small path that led
to Lake Geneva, and because she was blinded by sudden tears and
by the sunlight striking on the lake she did not see the boy or the dog
sitting on a rock at the lake's edge, and she crashed into them.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped as the boy slid off the rock and one of his
legs went knee deep into the water before he was able to regain his
balance. She looked at his angry, handsome face and said quickly,
this time in French, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you."
"You should watch where you're going!" the boy cried, and bent
down to wring the water out of his trouser leg. The dog, a large and
ferocious brindle bull, began leaping up at Flip, threatening to knock
her down.
"Oh—" she gasped. "Please—please—"
"Down, Ariel. Down!" the boy commanded, and the bulldog dropped
to his feet and then lay down in the path in front of Flip, his stump of
a tail wagging with such frenzy that his whole body quivered.
The boy looked at Flip's navy blue coat. "I'm afraid Ariel got your
coat dirty. His paws are always muddy."
"That's all right," Flip said. "If I let it dry it will brush off." She looked
up at the boy standing very straight and tall, one foot on the rock.
Flip was tall for fifteen ("I do hope you won't grow any taller, Philippa
dear," Mrs. Jackman kept saying,) but this boy was even taller than
she was and perhaps a year older.
"I'm sorry I knocked you into the lake," Flip said.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll dry off." The boy smiled; Flip had not realized
how somber his face was until he smiled. "Is anything the matter?"
he asked.
Flip brushed her hand across her eyes and smiled back. "No. I was
just—in a rage. I always cry when I'm mad. It's terrible!" She blew
her nose furiously.
The boy laughed. "May I ask you a question?" he said. "It's to settle
a kind of bet." He reached down and took hold of the bulldog's collar,
forcing him to rise to his feet. "Now sit properly, Ariel," he
commanded, and the dog dropped obediently to its haunches, its
tongue hanging out as it panted heavily. "And try not to drool, Ariel,"
the boy said. Then he smiled at Flip again. "You are staying at the
Montreux Palace, aren't you?"
"Yes." Flip nodded. "We came in from Paris last night."
"Are you Norwegian?"
"No. I'm American."
"She was right, then," the boy said.
"Right? About what? Who?" Flip asked. She sat down on the rock at
the edge of the water and Ariel inched over until he could rest his
head on her knee.
"My mother. We play a game whenever we're in hotels, my parents
and I. We look at all the people in the dining room and decide what
nationalities they are. It's lots of fun. My mother thought you were
American but my father and I thought maybe you were Norwegian,
because of your hair, you know."
Flip reached up and felt her hair. It was the color of very pale corn
and she wore it cut quite short, parted on the side with a bang falling
over her rather high forehead. Mrs. Jackman had suggested that she
have a permanent but for once Flip's father had not agreed. "She
has enough wave of her own and it suits her face this way," he said,
and Mrs. Jackman subsided.
"Your hair's very pretty," the boy said quickly. "And it made me
wonder if you mightn't be Scandinavian. Your father's so very fair,
too. But my mother said that your mother couldn't be anything but
American. She said that only an American could wear clothes like
that. She's very beautiful, your mother."
"She isn't my mother," Flip said. "My mother is dead."
"Oh." The boy dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Mrs. Jackman came from Paris with father and me." Flip's voice was
as hard and sharp as the stone she had picked up and was holding
between her fingers. "She's always being terribly kind and doing
things for me and I hate her."
"Watch out that Ariel doesn't drool on your skirt," the boy said. "One
of his worst faults is drooling. What's your name?"
"Philippa Hunter. What's yours?" Her voice still sounded angry.
"Paul Laurens. People—" he hesitated, "people who aren't your own
parents can sometimes be—be wonderful."
"Not Mrs. Jackman," Flip said. "She makes me call her Eunice. I feel
funny calling her Eunice. And when she calls my father 'darling' I
hate her. She's the one I got so mad at just now." She looked up at
Paul in surprise. "I've never talked about Eunice before. Not to
anyone. I shouldn't have talked like that. I'm sorry."
"That's all right," Paul said. "Ariel's made your coat very dirty. I hope
it will brush off. You have on a uniform, don't you?"
"Yes," Flip answered, and her voice was harsh because for the
moment tears were threatening her again. "I'm being sent to a
boarding school and I don't want to go. Mrs. Jackman arranged it
all." She looked out across the brilliant expanse of lake, scowling
unhappily, and forced the tears back.
"What do you want to do?" Paul asked.
"I want to be an artist some day, like my father. School won't help me
to be an artist." She continued to stare out over the water and her
eyes rested on a small lake steamer, very clean and white, passing
by. "I should like to get on that boat," she said, "and just ride and
ride, forever and ever."
"But the boat comes to shore and everybody has to get off at last,"
Paul told her.
"Why?" Flip asked. "Why?" She looked longingly after the boat for a
moment and then she looked at the mountains that seemed to be
climbing up into the sky. They looked like the mountains that she had
often made up out of cloud formations during the long slow summers
in Connecticut, only she was in Switzerland now; these were real
mountains; this was real snow on their shining peaks. "Well—" she
stood up, dislodging Ariel. "I'd better go back now. Mrs. Jackman will
think I'm off weeping somewhere."
Paul shook her hand. His grip was firm and strong. "Ariel doesn't
usually take to people the way he has to you. When Ariel doesn't like
people I know I'm never going to like them either. He has very good
taste. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime."
He smiled and Flip smiled back, murmuring shyly, "I hope so."
"My father and I are going to spend the winter up the mountain
somewhere," Paul said. "My mother's a singer and she has to go off
on a tour for all winter. They've been wandering about the chateau.
They like it because that's where my father proposed to my mother."
He smiled again and then his face changed and became so serious
that Flip looked at him in surprise. "I don't like it," he explained,
"because I don't like any place that's been a prison." Then he said,
trying to speak lightly, "Do you know that poem of the English poet,
Byron? The Prisoner of Chillon? It's all about a man who was a
prisoner in the chateau."
"Yes," Flip said. "We studied it in English last year. I didn't like it
much but I think I shall pretend that my school is a prison and I am
the prisoner and at Christmas my father will rescue me."
"If he doesn't," Paul said, "I will."
"Thank you," Flip said. "Are you—do you go to school?"
The same odd strained look came into Paul's eyes that had
darkened them when he mentioned prisons. "No," he said. "I'm not
going to school right now."
"Well ... good-bye," Flip said.
"Good-bye." Paul shook hands with her again. She turned clumsily
and patted Ariel's head; then she started back up the path towards
the chateau of Chillon.
2
About half way to the chateau she saw her father coming down the
path towards her. He was alone, so she ran up to him and caught
hold of his hand.
"All right now, Flippet?" Philip Hunter asked.
"Yes, father."
"It's not as though it were forever, funny face."
"I know, father. It's all right. I'm going to pretend that the school is the
chateau of Chillon and I'm the prisoner, and then at Christmas you'll
come and liberate me."
"I certainly will," Philip Hunter said. "Now let's go find Eunice. She's
worried about you."
Eunice Jackman was waiting for them, her hands plunged into the
pockets of her white linen suit. Her very black hair was pulled back
from her face into a smooth doughnut at the nape of her neck. "Only
a very beautiful woman should wear her hair like that," Philip Hunter
had told Flip. Now he waved at Eunice and shouted, "Hi!"
"Hi!" Eunice called, taking one hand leisurely out of her pocket and
waving back. "Feeling better, Philippa?"
"I can't feel better if I haven't been feeling badly," Flip said icily, "I just
wanted to go for a walk."
Eunice laughed. She laughed a great deal but her laugh never
sounded to Flip as though she thought anything was funny. "So you
went for a walk. Didn't you like the chateau, Philippa?" Eunice never
called her 'Flip'.
"I don't like to look at things with a lot of other people," Flip said. "I
like to look at them by myself. Anyhow I like the lake better. The lake
and the mountains."
Mrs. Jackman looked over at Philip Hunter and raised her eyebrows.
Then she slipped her hand through his arm. Flip looked at him, too,
at the short, straw-colored hair and the intense blue eyes, and her
heart ached with longing and love because she was to be sent away
from him.
"Wait till you get up to the school," Mrs. Jackman said. "According to
my friend Mrs. Downs, there's a beautiful view of the lake from every
window. You're going to adore school once you're there, Philippa."
"Necessities are necessary, but it isn't necessary to adore them," Flip
said. She hated herself for sounding so surly, but when she was with
Mrs. Jackman she always seemed to say the wrong thing. She
stared out over the lake to the mountains of France. She wanted to
go and press her burning cheeks against the cool whiteness of the
snowy tips.
"Well, if you're determined to be unhappy you probably will be," Mrs.
Jackman said. "Come on, Phil," and she patted Philip Hunter's arm.
"It's time to drive back to the hotel and have lunch, and then it will be
time to take Philippa up to the school. Most girls would consider
themselves extremely fortunate to be able to go to school in
Switzerland. How on earth did you get so dirty, Philippa? You're all
covered with mud. For heaven's sake brush her coat off, Phil. We
don't want her arriving at the school looking like a ragamuffin."
Flip said nothing. She reached for her father's hand and they walked
back to the tram that would take them along the lake to the Montreux
Palace.
While they were washing up for lunch Flip said to her father, "Why
did she have to come?"
"Eunice?"
"Yes. Why did she have to come?"
Philip Hunter was sitting on the edge of the bed, his sketch pad on
his knee. While Flip was drying her hands he was sketching her. She
was used to being sketched at any and all odd moments and paid no
attention. "Father," she prodded him.
At last he looked up from the pad. "She didn't have to come. She
offered to come since it was she who suggested this school, and it
was most kind of her. You're very rude to Eunice, Flippet, and I don't
like it."
"I'm sorry," she said, leaning against him and looking down at the
dozens of little sketches on the open page of his big pad. She looked
at the sketch he had just finished of her, at the quick line drawings of
people in the tram, of Eunice in the tram, of sightseers in the
chateau, of Eunice in the chateau, of Eunice drinking coffee in the
salon of the Montreux Palace, of Eunice on the train from Paris, of
Eunice sitting on a suitcase in the Gâre Saint Lazare. She handed
the pad back to him and went over to her suitcase filled with all the
regulation blouses and underclothes and stockings Eunice had
bought for her; it was so very kind of Eunice. "I don't see why I can't
stay with you," Flip said.
Philip Hunter got up from the bed and took her hands in his.
"Philippa, listen to me. No, don't pull away. Stand still and listen. I
should have left you in New York with your grandmother. But I
listened to you and we did have a beautiful summer together in
Paris, didn't we?"
"Oh, yes!"
"And now I suppose I should really send you back to New York to
Gram, but I think you need to be more with young people, and it
would mean that we couldn't be together at Christmas, or at Easter.
So in sending you to school I'm doing the best I can to keep us
together as much as possible. I'm going to be wandering around
under all sort of conditions making sketches for Roger's book and
you couldn't possibly come with me even if it weren't for missing a
year of school. Now be sensible, Flip, please, darling, and don't
make it harder for yourself and for me than it already is. Eunice is
right. If you set your mind on being unhappy you will be unhappy."
"I haven't set my mind on being unhappy," Flip said. "I don't want to
be unhappy."
"Everything's understood, then, Flippet?"
"I guess so."
"Come along down to the dining room, then. Eunice will be
wondering what on earth's keeping us."
3
After lunch, which Flip could not eat, they took her to the station.
Flip's ticket said: No. 09717 Pensionnat Abelard—Jaman—Chemin
de Fer Montreux Oberland Bernois Troisieme Classe, Montreux à
Jaman, valable 10 jours. Eunice was very much impressed because
there were special tickets for the school.
The train went up the mountain like a snake. The mountain was so
steep that the train climbed in a continuous series of hairpin bends,
stopping frequently at the small villages that clustered up the
mountain side. Flip sat next to the window and stared out with a set
face. Sometimes they could see the old grey stones of a village
church, or a glimpse of a square with a fountain in the centre. They
passed new and ugly stucco villas occasionally, but mostly old brown
chalets with flowers in the windows. Sometimes in the fields by the
chalets there would be cows, though most of the cows were grazing
further up the mountain. The fields and roadsides were full of autumn
flowers and everything was still a rich summer green. At one stop
there was a family of children, all in blue denim shorts and white
shirts, three girls and two boys, waiting for the pleasant looking
woman in a tweed suit who stepped off the train. All the children
rushed at her, shouting, "Mother! Mother!"
"Americans," Eunice said. "There's quite a considerable English and
American colony here, I believe."
Flip stared longingly out the window as the children and their mother
went running and laughing up the hill. She thought perhaps Paul and
his mother were happy in the same way. She felt her father's hand
on her knee and she said quickly, "Write me lots, father. Lots and lots
and lots."
"Lots and lots and lots," he promised as the train started again. "And
the time will pass quickly, you'll see. There's an art studio where you
can draw and paint. You'll be learning all the time."
Eunice lit a cigarette although there was a sign saying no smoking
in French, Italian, and German. All the notices were in French,
Italian, and German. do not spit. do not lean out the window.
do not put bags out the window. "The next stop's Jaman,"
Eunice said.
Something turned over in Flip's stomach. I should be ashamed, she
thought. I should be ashamed to be so scared.
But she was scared. She had never been separated, even for a
night, from her entire family. During the war when her father had
been in Europe, her mother was still alive; and then in the dark days
after her mother's death Gram had come to live with them; and
afterwards, whenever her father had to go away for a few days
without her, at least Gram had been there. Now she would be
completely on her own. She remembered her mother shaking her
once, and laughing at her, and saying, "Darling, darling, you must
learn to be more independent, to stand on your own feet. You must
not cling so to father and me. Suppose something should happen to
us? What would you do?" That thought was so preposterously
horrible that Flip could not face it. She had flung her arms about her
mother and hidden her head.
Now she could not press her face under her mother's arm and
escape from the world. Now she was older, much older, almost an
adult, and she had to stand on her own feet and not be afraid of
other girls. She had always been afraid of other girls. In the day
school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations
with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. During recess
she sat in a corner and drank her chocolate milk through a straw and
read a book, and whenever they had to choose partners for anything
she was always paired off with Betty Buck, the other unpopular girl.
And on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they had gym in the
afternoon, whenever they chose teams Flip was always the last one
chosen; Betty Buck could run fast so she was always chosen early.
Flip couldn't run fast. She had a stiff knee from the bad time when
her knee cap had been broken, so it wasn't entirely her fault, but that
didn't make it any easier.
However, in New York, Flip didn't mind too much about school. She
usually finished her homework in her free period so when she got
home the rest of the day was hers. If her father was painting in his
studio she would sit and watch him, munching one of the apples he
always kept in a big bowl on the table with his jars of brushes.
Sometimes she cleaned his brushes for him and put them back
carefully in the right jars, the blue ginger jar, the huge green pickle
jar, the two brass vases he had brought from China. Flip loved to
watch him paint. He painted all sorts of things. He painted a great
many children's portraits. He had painted literally dozens of portraits
of Flip and one of them was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
people had bought some of the others. It always seemed strange to
Flip that people should want a picture of someone else's child in their
homes.
Sometimes Philip Hunter did illustrations for children's books and
Flip had all of these books in her bookshelves; it seemed that she
could never outgrow them. They were in the place of honor and
whenever she was sick in bed or unhappy she would take them out
and look at them. The book he was doing illustrations for now was
one which he said was going to be very beautiful and important, and
it was a history of lost children all through the ages. There would be
pictures of the lost children in the children's crusade and the lost
children in the southern states after the civil war and in Russia after
the revolution, and now he was going to travel all around drawing
pictures of lost children all over Europe and Asia and he told Flip that
he hoped maybe the book would help people to realize that all these
children had to be found and taken care of.
When Flip thought about all the lost children she felt a deep shame
inside herself for her anger and resentment against Eunice and for
the hollow feeling inside her stomach now as the train crawled higher
and higher up the mountain. She was not a lost child. She would
have a place to eat and sleep and keep warm all winter, and at
Christmas time she would be with her father again.
Now the train was slowing down. Eunice stood up and brushed
imaginary specks off her immaculate white skirt. Philip Hunter took
Flip's suitcase off the rack. "This is it, Flippet," he said.
An old black taxi took them further up the mountain to the school.
The school had once been a big resort hotel and it was an imposing
building with innumerable red roofed turrets flying small flags; and
iron balconies were under every window. The taxi driver took Flip's
bag and led them into a huge lounge with a marble floor and stained
glass in the windows. There should have been potted palms by the
marble pillars, but there weren't. Girls of all ages and sizes were
running about, reading notices on the big bulletin board, carrying
suitcases, tennis rackets, ice skates, hockey sticks, skis, cricket
bats, lacrosse sticks, arms full of books. A wide marble staircase
curved down into the centre of the hall. To one side of it was a big
cage-like elevator with a sign, faculty only, in English, French,
German, Italian, and Spanish. At the other side of the staircase was
what had once been the concierge's desk with innumerable cubby
holes for mail behind it. A woman with very dark hair and bushy
eyebrows sat at it now, and she looked over at Eunice and Flip and
Philip Hunter inquiringly. They crossed the hall to the desk.
"This is Philippa Hunter, one of the new girls," Eunice said, pushing
Flip forward. "I am Mrs. Jackman and this is Mr. Hunter."